World News in Brief: March 7

The Lao government has continued to pursue a policy of encouraging more women to play a role in the country's leadership, and vowed to increase the number of women in leading positions in state departments, said local daily Vientiane Times on March 7.

Laos has set a target to increase the proportion of women holding leadership positions in central-level state organizations to 30 percent by 2020, according to statistics provided last week by the Lao Women's Union.

* At least 18 people were killed by a magnitude 6.7 quake that struck Papua New Guinea's mountainous Southern Highlands early Wednesday.

The tremor, shortly after midnight local time, struck just 31 km (19 miles) southwest of the epicentre of a magnitude 7.5 quake that flattened villages and caused landslides last Monday, killing at least 55 people.

* Two senior RoK officials who met with the DPRK's Kim Jong Un this week will depart for Washington on Thursday (March 8) to brief US officials on the outcome of their meeting. A detailed itinerary has yet to be confirmed.

* The Russian Defense Ministry said that the military transport plane that crashed in Syria on March 6 was carrying 39 people, instead of a previous report of 32, when the accident happened while landing in the Hmeymim airbase in Syria.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan discussed the situation in Syria's Eastern Ghouta during a telephone call, the Kremlin said on March 6.

Separately, the Russian military has offered Syrian rebels safe passage out of eastern Ghouta, setting out a proposal to let the insurgents surrender their last major stronghold near Damascus to President Bashar Al-Assad, which fighters have so far rejected.